[rec.birds] Foster Parents

rising@utzoo.uucp (Jim Rising) (04/05/88)

Someone else can answer your question better than I, Joyce.  But it
is adaptively disadvantageous to raise offspring that you have "not
contributed genes to," and thus there is selection to evolve mechanisms
to avoid doing it.  One would suppose that that would never happen
naturally in ospreys.  Thus, there has been no selection for avoidance
mechanisms.  However, it probably is a common "problem" for ungulates
and other farm animals.

--Jim Rising
-- 
Name:   Jim Rising
Mail:   Dept. Zoology, Univ. Toronto
        Toronto, Ontario, Canada    M5S 1A1
UUCP:   {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!rising

jla@inuxd.UUCP (Joyce Andrews) (04/07/88)

> Someone else can answer your question better than I, Joyce.  But it
> is adaptively disadvantageous to raise offspring that you have "not
> contributed genes to," and thus there is selection to evolve mechanisms
> to avoid doing it.  One would suppose that that would never happen
> naturally in ospreys.  Thus, there has been no selection for avoidance
> mechanisms.  However, it probably is a common "problem" for ungulates
> and other farm animals.
> 
> --Jim Rising
> -- 

Interesting thought, Jim.  To follow up, the Wildlife folks were
wrong, and Wiz is out there by herself.  She did not stay at the
nest.  We can only hope that instinct will teach her to fish,
although that is usually the job of the parents.  We wanted to
release her from the bird center so she could at least come back
for food if she couldn't fish.  But the authorities said she had
to go back where she was picked up.  And what they say goes if we
are to continue our work.         

Oz, though, is not alone.  He has been joined by Scruffy, a
newly-fledged osprey with a dislocated wing joint.  They are so
beautiful, and so funny, too.  I put their fish on their platform
and then copllect them from where the are in the flight cage.  I
pick them up (one at a time) and carry them up the step ladder to
the platform and place them next to their free lunch.  They, in
turn, glare at me with a mighty-hunter-eagle stare.  I tell them
that freeloaders are not permitted a mighty-hunter stare, but
they seem to be in charge.  After all, I am the one who leaves my
keyboard and drives to the center and picks up the smelly fish
and cleans the platform, etc.  They have me VERY well trained.

                                              

-- 
	Joyce Andrews King                      
	ihnp4!inuxd!jla
	AT&T, Indianapolis